Dad accused of repeatedly hitting daughter with bamboo

A SUNSHINE Coast father who is alleged to have repeatedly struck his 14-year-old daughter with a bamboo stick is fighting an assault charge.

The father, who for legal reasons cannot be named, is alleged to have dealt two series of blows to the girl on November 20, 2011, after he caught her using her iPod and she swore under her breath.

The Maroochydore District Court heard yesterday that the father made her stand with her hands against the wall while the Pacific Paradise man struck her at least five or six times until the stick broke.

In a recorded police interview played to the court, she said he told her to strip down to her underpants while he fetched another stick.

The girl said she had put on eight pairs of underpants under her shorts before the first beating, and changed down to five pairs of underpants and sat on a bag of frozen peas to numb her bottom before the second series of blows.

In the interview, she said she had obeyed her father's request to apologise but he mistook her tone for defiance.

She said the second beating had ended after she told him to stop and fought back.

"I was hoping that if I screamed loud enough, the neighbours might hear and call the police," she said.

The girl said she had been left with purple and black raised bruises on her bottom after the beating.

Section 280 of the Queensland Criminal Code allows a parent - or person in place of a parent or a school master - to use reasonable force for the correction, discipline, management or control of a child.

Prosecutor Greg Cummings told the jury the Crown contended that the second series of strikes constituted the assault.

The girl said she had not considered she had been abused until she told her mother.

"She just sat me down and said, '(name deleted), you're never going back to your dad's. He's physically abused you'," she said.

In pre-recorded evidence, the girl agreed with a lawyer that she had not been given the chance to reconsider if she wanted to go ahead with proceedings. She said she had not meant to get her father in trouble.